The present application is directed to methods and systems for identifying and tracking food items made available for consumption by consumers, e.g., as in a restaurant. In one implementation, methods and systems disclosed herein are used for managing the preparation and distribution of sushi in a kaiten sushi restaurant.
“Kaiten” is a Japanese word with an approximate English translation meaning “turns”. It relates to the “turning” of a conveyor belt in the kaiten sushi dining experience. Kaiten sushi restaurants were first invented in the late 1950's in Japan where they created a new category of quick service sushi dining. In kaiten sushi restaurants, a conveyor belt winds its way around the restaurant, at some point closing the circle back onto itself. Typically, sushi chefs stand inside the belt and prepare assorted sushi and related dishes, which they then put on small color-coded plates that are subsequently placed on the conveyor belt. The color coding relates to the price of the item on the plate. For example, sushi items on a green plate may cost $1.00, while sushi items on a yellow plate may cost $1.50 or on a light blue plate may cost $2.00, and so on. These plates then travel around the circuit of the conveyor belt, full of sushi choices for the restaurant customers. Customers watch the plates go by and choose the ones they wish, taking the plates off the belt and thereby leaving an empty spot on the conveyor for the sushi chef to quickly fill with another plate of sushi.
At the end of a meal, a customer has a stack of individual plates that are subsequently tallied by a waiter/server (e.g., five green plates@1.00+three yellow plates@$1.50=$9.50) and a bill is generated for the customer. Conveyor belt sushi has proven to be an innovative way of dining that has gained significant popularity in Japan and is now making its way to the United States.
There are a number of operational challenges in a kaiten sushi environment. For example, an important part of a kaiten sushi operation is identifying for the customer the type of sushi that is sitting on each individual plate that passes before them. To date, such forms of identification have been static, including either a structural ring system as found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/485,843 (assigned to the assignee of the present application), a flag identifier as found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,937,922, or identification stickers placed on the plates. What is needed is a method and system that dynamically shows customers what is on a particular sushi plate as it passes by on the conveyor belt.
At the end of a customer's meal, a server must tally up the plates of different colors and calculate the total bill for the customer. Frequently, a server will erroneously miscount the number of plates of a specific color (e.g., counting four green plates instead of five green plates, or counting three blue plates instead of two blue plates). This results in an incorrect tally of the overall bill to the customer. What is needed is a method and system that improves and automates the tallying of plates for calculating the customer's bill in a quick, accurate, and efficient manner.
The present application addresses these needs as well as other shortcomings in existing food identification and distribution systems, as for example used in a kaiten sushi restaurant.